They Hate Leftwing Israelis, Too

by Rafael Medoff

The Cornell University’s Student Assembly recently voted, by 19 to 2, to condemn the university administration for permitting a former Member of Knesset to speak on campus.

Who do you suppose was the speaker to whom the students angrily objected? A representative of one of Israel’s right-of-center parties? Someone who supports building Jewish settlements and opposes making more concessions to the Palestinian Authority?

Hardly. The target of the Cornell students’ ire was none other than Tzipi Livni, former leader of the left-of-center opposition in the Knesset.

If ever there was an Israeli politician whom you would expect American college students to embrace, it would be Livni.

She’s a fervent supporter of creating a Palestinian Arab state, and over the past decade has been one of the harshest critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Livni has said, “History won’t forgive Netanyahu for the damage he is doing to Israel.” She has accused Netanyahu of “humiliating the Palestinians.” She has even gone so far as to claim that Netanyahu was bringing about “the demise of the Jewish state.”

The Cornell students who denounced Livni pointed to the fact that she was Israel’s foreign minister during Operation Cast Lead, a military action against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

It’s worth recalling that the prime minister who ordered Cast Lead was Ehud Olmert and the defense minister who implemented it was Ehud Barak—two more of Netanyahu’s most vehement critics on the left.

That fact is a reminder that there has always been a broad right-to-left consensus in Israel on the need to take action against the Hamas terrorists, even before October 7. Israelis may have their differences, but not when it comes to national self-defense.

Media pundits and critics of Israel often claim that the college campus attacks on Israel are merely disagreements with the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu, not opposition to Israel itself.

The Cornell students’ denunciation of Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu’s arch-critic, suggests otherwise.

(Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news.)